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Mike-

> what I said is 100% true. These facts you list above are also

>true and accurate corporate practices, but their success rides on

>ONE thing...

>

>Sheeple being unable to ask, probe and critically think. Sorry

>friend but the ultimate responsability for the rise or fall of the

>sheeple lies with the sheeple.

You keep accusing me (us) of wanting to give individuals (parents etc.) a

free pass for their ignorance and stupidity, and I (we) keep protesting

that that's not true, just as you keep protesting that you don't mean to

absolve corporations of their responsibility, but insisting that the

ultimate responsibility lies with the sheeple does just that.

And to be fair, I haven't talked that much about what should be done about

the sheeple, with the exception of protesting that I'm not giving them a

free pass and joking about kids suing parents.

Remember the vegan parents who lost custody of their baby because it was

failing to thrive on a vegan diet? Although interventions like that are a

lousy last-resort sort of corrective mechanism, I think that given the

overall situation we're in, it's GREAT. Scare the bejeesus out of parents

who would malnourish their kids like that, and make parents think about

what health and nutrition really mean. We frankly need more of that, and

if the low-fat gestapo try to impose their own vision of how kids should be

fed, fight fire with fire. And that means us doing the fighting and not

leaving it to the so-called sheeple.

And as a practical matter, the sheeple are not the only ones being

penalized by their sheepness: their kids are being punished for the sins of

their parents. We can point fingers at the sheeple-parents all we want and

say it's their fault until we're blue in the face, but that doesn't do a

damn thing for the kids, who are being poisoned and malnourished into new

generations of sheeple and sheeple-parents.

>If you're stupid enough to believe and not question that

>Oreo's or the like are fine, considering the boatload of clear info

>that says otherwise you deserve your own horrible self sealed fate.

Sure, if YOU choose to believe Oreos are healthy, maybe it's fair to say

you deserve your own fate, but what about when you turn your kid into an

Oreo-gobbling monster? Why is it so bad to try to stop kids from being

destroyed by ignorant parents? We don't let kids drink booze, and alcohol,

at least in moderation, might even be a good thing, at least for some.

>It continues to amaze me how intelligent critcal thinkers like

>yourself and other folks I meet simply want to give the sheeple a

>free pass and make it the " fault " of the big bad corporations who

>admittedly suck in the most major way, but still fall short on the

>responsability scale.

Well, for all your protests to the contrary, I honestly don't see where

you're holding the corporations responsible at all, other than saying they

suck. (And like I said, I hadn't really said anything substantive about

the converse.) Responsibility requires consequences.

And why exactly do they fall so far short on the responsibility scale? If

corporations secretly (and openly) fund fraudulent research in favor of bad

things like sugar and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and create

hordes of credentialed experts (and I do mean " create " ) then how much blame

exactly should fall on average people who assume that the vast majority of

doctors and universities really do have their best interests at

heart? Everyone can't spend the time to become an expert on media

manipulation AND traditional nutrition AND biology AND physiology and so on

and so forth. It's just not possible, and even if it were, think of how

many other fields would suffer because people who should have been working

in physics and literature and telecommunications and everything else

dropped their primary careers to become expert in those other fields.

>If you eat oreo's and the like and feed them

>to your kids the responsibility for your consequences and those of

>your kids lie with you not nabisco.

So what are the consequences?

And if Nabisco and its ilk spend hundreds of millions of dollars, even

billions, creating bogus experts and fraudulent expert recommendations and

completely deforming the information environment, and as a result, many

people eat bad foods and get sick, why are they absolved of all

responsibility and consequences? They wouldn't be spending all that money

if it didn't often work.

>Yes the schools should stop taking their money, yes they should be

>forced to advertise fairly and truthfully, yes they should not be

>baiting children. Yes to all of these, but when someone plunks down

>4 bucks for a bag of oreos the responsibility is nowhere with anyone

>but the plunker.

It sounds to me like you're saying advertising, PR, persuasion, and lies

are all meaningless and ineffective, and I don't understand how you can say

that. If a Nabisco executive held a gun to a child's head and forced the

child to eat a package of Oreos, he'd be 100% responsible for the kid

consuming the Oreos. Why does the Nabisco executive's responsibility

instantly drop to 0% as soon as the gun is taken out of the equation, no

matter how much lying, bogus science, PR, corruption, and so on are

involved? It's a historical fact that spending all that money, corrupting

the system, creating bogus experts, waging PR campaigns, undermining

education, and so on and so forth all have consequences. People change

their buying and eating and living habits, and their kids habits are

changed too, as a result. Those are consequences. So why don't the

entities (corporations, executives, etc.) bear some measure of the

responsibility, and why shouldn't they suffer some portion of the

consequences? Right now the only people suffering are the sheeple, who

maybe deserve it, and their kids, who don't no matter how you calculate it.

-

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In a message dated 5/16/03 6:39:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

heidis@... writes:

> Homeschooling is " cheap " mainly because you are not paying the Mom's

> salary. If I am worth, say, $20,000 a year, then my kid's schooling would

> cost $10,000 a year each, which is NOT cheap. And the fact is, I'm worth

> more than $20,000 on the open market. Having a stay at home Mom is

> priceless: it is NOT cheap!

I homeschooled for a year and a half or so when I was 15-16. I was lucky to

have a community center for homeschoolers in the area (about 40 minutes away)

that was started by two local teachers that " dropped out " of the school

system,and brought a bunch of kids with them. They helped out with legal

stuff, offered " classes " field trips, discussion groups, you name it. You

could come and go as you pleased and utilize it however you want. They also

had a sliding scale fee to allow everyone from any socio-economic background

to be able to attend (the only reason I'd ever have been able to go.)

The only reason they were able to do this was by killing their own salaries.

One of them lived for years very frugally off his life savings (before he was

a teacher he was a lawyer for musicians and had saved a bit of money), the

other just lived very very frugally, and took something like $5 or $10,000 a

year out. When I was going the membership was about 50 or 60 families, and

it is more now. But they still cannot raise enough money with membership and

fundraisers to afford the families that they both have now. They are trying

to get grants now, or else they will have to shut down.

IOW, education is expensive enough that they need government support to even

pay their staff. For some people, education is the cost of some books to

read, but not everyone can learn in that type of environment (or vaccuum?).

" Expensive " is relative.

Chris

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and

servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore

Roosevelt

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,

As much as I hate sugar, I'm not really with you on this.

Sugar is not comparable to PHVO for numerous reasons.

As to the rat study, first, it was a rat study. That's informative-- but

there is too much info to look at sugar's impact on humans to revert to a rat

study on it. Second, they were *only* fed sugar. Rats fed part of their

diet as sugar, like humans, do live a considerable length.

The difference between PHVO and sugar is that sugar in a proper context and

amount can be safe or perhaps even healthful in the proper form, whereas PHVO

does not occur in nature, and confers zero benefit at any quantity.

Define sugar. Fruit is mostly sugar. Table sugar is sugar. Rapadura is

sugar. Raw honey is sugar. Beets are largely sugar. Bananss are *full* of

sugar. Is *everything* with sugar to be banned?

If you want to ban only refined white sugar, there is an enormous burden of

proof on you to demonstrate that unrefined cane sugar is more than marginally

better than refined cane sugar that you probably cannot meet. Rapadura's

charts on how much more nutritious they are than other sugars looks good, but

if you compare it to non-sugar-cane foods the difference really is marginal.

I use it, but I don't consider it a healthy food, and I use it very, very,

rarely.

Raw honey is basically pure sugar. But it also has tons of benefits if used

in the PEROPER CONTEXT AND AMOUNT. But someone could *easily* damage their

health with enough raw honey if they used it as recklessly as people use

white sugar today. In fact, the could do the same with fruit.

Aside from nutritional history studies or whatever about people who eat fruit

(because they're also more likely to eat vegetables) you probably couldn't

find that great of a health benefit to fruit. And you could make a case

fruit is more toxic than glucose syrup, based on metabolism of fructose and

glucose. I don't agree with it, but you could certainly make a good case.

And *definitely* could for fruit *juice*.

I very much doubt fruit juice is better for kids than table sugar. Should we

ban that? If it is made with high fructose corn syrup, probably even worse.

Oh, but that's a dillema-- high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup are

essentially unrefined sweetneers. What makes them different than maple

syrup, or are we banning that too?

There are people who live into their 90s and eat sugar. Sure they might be

hidden away in the boondocks of Maine with a family of hunters eating moose

heart and liver every day, but they're there. Melvin Page found that about

20% of the people he studied could eat sugar without disrupting their

calcium-phosphorus ratios. This roughly corresponds to Barry Sears' claim

that about 25% of Americans do not have significant hyperinsulinemic

responses to sugar and starch.

The fact is that sugar affects everyone differently. It is a poison to some,

and not to others.

Moreover, for most people sugar must simply be prepared in the proper way,

used in the proper context, and used with the appropriate degree of

MODERATION exercised, in order to get the benefit of good taste without the

harm.

Chris

In a message dated 5/16/03 8:12:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

radiantlife@... writes:

>

> I think that there are good grounds to ban sugar altogether. It is

> addictive, and damages health beyond a shadow of a doubt. Sally

> regularly quotes the study which showed that rodents lived longer

> consuming just water I believe, than sugar. If a substance can't help

> you live longer than water fasting than it fails the most basic test for

> being called " food. " Anything that does not pass such a test, if it

> could be confused for food, should be labeled " NOT FOR HUMAN

> CONSUMPTION. " Heck, put " or animal " ( " or rodent? " ) on the label too.

>

> One could argue that the government is already dictating the foods we

> can and can't eat to a very large extent. Look at stevia, raw milk,

> laws against small farming/butchering practices, subsidies of big

> agriculture while small farms go broke by the tens of thousands,

> labeling laws that deceive and benefit the big guys, crackdowns on

> really effective supplements and healing technologies, and the last 50

> years of gov./biz collusion around fats and oils and the low-fat

> paradigm. Not to justify the government's practices, but to point out

> what is already happening. I would be in favor of a radical honest

> independent reassessment of the food supply, and subjecting every

> coloring, flavoring, excitotoxin, sweetener, preservative, additive, as

> well as any other proposed food substance sold in the US, to independent

> scrutiny - demanding that proof be shown (independent, not

> corporate-funded studies) that the substance actually supports human

> health both in the short- and long-term (and intergenerationally most

> importantly of all!) with no side effects. Nice fantasy eh?

>

> My grandfather, Herbert Dutton, is a lipid chemist who blew one of the

> first peer-reviewed whistles on trans fats around the time that

> Enig published her original papers on the subject. He is quoted in

> " Facts about Fats " by Finnegan as saying that if trans fats were brought

> before the FDA today, they would not be approved for use in the food

> supply. Why should foods be " grandfathered " into the food supply (is

> that a pun or just a play?) just because they were approved before we

> knew better?

>

> One key (and essential) victory for consumers would be a change in the

> powers of corporations, as others have mentioned on this list. Taking

> away corporate limited liability and the current corporate right to

> personhood would strike fear into the scheming hearts of thousands of

> CEOs and executives who now sit around all day long and devise new

> colorful, impossibly sweet and tasty confections to lure kids/parents

> into dropping $5 on $.50 worth of wheat, sugar, trans fats, and

> colorings (cereal). It figures that most of these guys answer to a

> master that has already addicted and killed too many millions - the

> tobacco industry (their parent corporation). If Price were still around

> I'm sure he would have created another maxim: that food must never

> become a commodity like oil or computers, which is bought and sold

> between strangers and where the primary motivation is profit. We must

> resist the commodification of our lives, and work to regain the richness

> of our natural context, which as Irene pointed out, is community. In

> that context, it is hard for people to sell poison to each other, and

> they certainly wouldn't pollute the river upstream of their neighbors if

> they could help it. It will be a long road to get back to some kind of

> bioregional self-sufficiency and sustainability for most of us, but

> that's where high-quality nutrient-dense community oriented food systems

> lead us whether we realize it or not.

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servi

le, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore Roosevelt

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Theresa,

I too knew that smoking was bad for you when my mom smoked as a kid (of

course I was bombarded with this information day in and day out from school,

etc.)

But it really seems irrelevant. If I was running a car in a closed garage,

I'd get the sense that those exhaust fumes are poisonous pretty fast. But I

don't get that sense walking down the street, even though the car exhaust

fumes in the air are likely wreaking long-term slow damage in my lungs

comparable to that of cigarettes.

Even when I smoked, I wouldn't want to be in a closed room where someone

smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day, even though I smoked a pack to a pack and

a half a day. If you smoke a cigarette outside, you breath in fresh air too,

and the smoke doesn't fill your eyes up. It's just two different things.

And American Indians and other " primitive " groups that used tobacco (however

often they did it) and believed in some health *benefit* to it, did not do so

in closed rooms either. And it was not " obvious " to them it was bad for

them. If anything makes it obvious, maybe it is smoking them indoors.

Moreover, all this is missing the point-- because your own experience gave

you a certain impression, does not mean that your impression is " obvious. "

Dr. Mike used the word " myopic. " I don't know what is more myopic than being

unable to see beyond your own personal experience and believing it applies to

everyone else.

Chris

In a message dated 5/17/03 2:08:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

Polyclean@... writes:

> I must agree with with Dr. Marasco on this one too. I too grew up in a house

>

> with a Dad who smoked 2 packs a day (and still does by the way). Sitting in

> a

> smoke filled living room was enough information for me to decide I wanted

> no

> part of it. O.K., I did smoke one time as a teen-ager under peer pressure,

> but only once. YUK! No thanks.

> My father is a very intelligent man, and is fully aware of the dangers of

> smoking. He knows he is addicted, but also knows that there are many ways

> of

> quitting if he chose to do so. Unfortunately, his life experiences cause

> him

> to CHOOSE to continue to smoke for the pleasure it gives him while he is on

>

> this earth. I don't agree, but it is certainly his choice to make.

>

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and

servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore

Roosevelt

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In a message dated 5/17/03 10:25:12 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

s.fisher22@... writes:

> >>>As much as I hate sugar, I'm not really with you on this.

>

> -------->for the record, I don't agree with banning sugar either, for the

> same reasons you presented.

>

Oh, there was one thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post: ,

kudos to your grandfather!!!

Chris

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and

servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore

Roosevelt

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>Kids eat it because their parents tell them to!!!!

>>>>And every parent who tells a kid to eat margarine or oreos or whatever

is

doing a very bad thing, and is responsible for the kid eating those bad

things. But at the same time, companies creating poisonous products and

marketing them directly to kids are creating demand among kids. They're

responsible too. We have to oppose those companies just as much as we push

parents to be more educated and responsible.

-------->and along those lines, here's an article that was posted to the

chapter leaders list recently (the actual bill of rights is in the sidebar

at this link):

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15754

The Parents' Bill of Rights

By Rowe and Ruskin, Mothering Magazine

April 28, 2003

Kurnit is the president of KidShop, an advertising firm that

specializes in marketing to children, and he has plans for our kids.

" Kid business has become big business, " Kurnit says. To make it even bigger,

he preaches what he calls " surround marketing " - saturation advertising that

captures kids at every possible moment.

" You've got to reach kids throughout the day - in school, as they're

shopping at the mall, or at the movies, " says Carol Herman, a senior vice

president at Grey Advertising. " You've got to become part of the fabric of

their lives. "

This is what parents today are up against - corporate advertisers who seek

to entwine themselves with children's lives. By most measures, they are

succeeding. Each week, the typical American child takes in some 38 hours

(yes, a full work week) of commercial media, with its endless ads and

come-ons. And that's not counting the ads that commandeer their attention

from billboards and the Internet, the omnipresent brand logos, and the

advertising that increasingly fills the schools.

The merchandise pushers have invaded the commons of childhood, the free open

spaces of imagination and play, and turned it into a free-fire zone of

commercial importuning. In some quarters, this appalling situation is seen

as success. " There have never been more ways in the culture to support

marketing towards kids, " enthuses Kidscreen, a publication for ad firms and

corporations that target kids. (That there's a market for such a publication

is revealing.)

Corporate advertisers have contrived to wedge themselves into the space

between parents and their children. They enlist the best psychologists and

market researchers money can buy to lure kids to products and values many of

us don't approve of and even abhor. Parents find themselves in a grim daily

battle to keep these forces at bay.

On their own, parents cannot contend with the nation's largest corporations

and their weapons of mass childhood seduction. It's time Washington stood up

for parents. It's time for politicians to recognize that raising children is

the most important task of our society.

It's time, in other words, for a Parents' Bill of Rights.

Not that long ago, parents actually had control over the front doors of

their homes. Sure, a kid might hide a racy magazine under the mattress, but

little came into the house without the parents' okay. Even outside the home

and school, for adults to approach kids with the thought of influencing them

was considered an antisocial act, and offenders could be put in jail.

The invention of electronic media changed all that. The history of the last

century, in fact, could be written as the story of how marketers contrived

to bypass parents and speak directly to impressionable children. The front

door became a permeable membrane, admitting the advertising industry to its

promised land. Children are " natural and enthusiastic buyers, " a child

psychologist wrote in the 1938 book, Reaching Juvenile Markets. For

advertisers, he went on, there was a " tremendous sales potential. "

Psychologists, who are supposed to help children, were now employed to help

ensnare them. No longer were such adults considered predators; because they

wore suits, sat in offices, and operated at a distance through the media,

they were respectable executives and even " pioneers. " In the 1930s, the

medium was radio; sponsors of children's shows included Ralston cereal and

Ovaltine - products that parents actually might want their kids to have -

and the ads themselves seem almost tame by today's standards. The young ear

is not as impressionable as the eye, and advertisers were still concerned

that Mom or Dad might be listening.

Then came television and the beginning of the modern era in the assault on

kids. Television is inferior to radio as a story-telling medium; radio

engages the imagination, while television numbs it. But as an advertising

medium, television is unsurpassed. Children want what they see, and with

television advertisers could offer an endless parade of things to want.

After Welch's grape juice became a sponsor of the Howdy Doody show in the

1950s, sales of grape juice to families with young children increased almost

five-fold.

With television, moreover, the ads weren't just between the shows. They

could be in the shows as well. The Disney Corporation created a series about

Davy Crockett, starring the actor Fess in a coonskin cap. In short

order, kids throughout the country were nagging their parents for the mock

coonskin caps that coincidentally appeared in the stores. Crockett gear

became a $300 million business - roughly $2 billion in today's dollars.

Increasingly, advertisers had the children to themselves. Few parents sat

through the Mickey Mouse Club or the Saturday morning cartoon shows. Even

shows for general audiences held untapped possibilities. Since kids are the

most impressionable audience in the house, why not enlist them as sales

agents in regard to everything the family bought? " Eager minds can be molded

to want your products! " enthused a firm that produced " education " materials

for schools. " Sell these children on your brand name, and they will insist

that their parents buy no other. "

Corporations literally were alienating the loyalty of children away from

their parents and toward themselves. Rejection of parental authority became

a persistent and embedded theme, even in seemingly innocuous shows like

Howdy Doody. Television figures became surrogate parents who pushed

consumption at every turn. Dr. Frances Horwich, the kindly " principal " of

Ding Dong School, popped vitamins and urged her preschool viewers to tell

their mothers to pick the bottle with the pretty red pills at the drugstore.

Perhaps it was not entirely accidental that the generation weaned on such

fare would become, a decade later, the " Me Generation " of the 1960s.

Advertisers were thinking long term. " Think of what it can mean to your firm

in profits, " Clyde wrote in " The Process of Persuasion, " " if you can

condition a million or ten million children who will grow into adults

trained to buy your products as soldiers who are trained to advance when

they hear the trigger words 'Forward, march.' "

These developments did not go unnoticed at the time. In his landmark book

" The Lonely Crowd, " Riesman observed that corporations had designed a

new role for children, as " consumer trainees. " In the process, Riesman said,

they had turned traditional values upside down. Earlier in the century,

children's publications had promoted such qualities as self-discipline and

perseverance. " The comparable media today, " he wrote, " train the young for

the frontiers of consumption - to tell the difference between Pepsi-Cola and

Coca-Cola, as later between Old Golds and Chesterfields. " (The latter were

popular cigarette brands.)

Some parents did resist. In the 1950s there often were a few kids in the

neighborhood who weren't allowed to watch TV. But most parents then, as now,

were reluctant to deny their kids what their friends had. Moreover, parents

themselves were caught up in the commercial euphoria of the post-war years,

when a new car or television seemed a just reward for the hardships of the

Depression and a world war.

Soon the commercial saturation of childhood became the new norm, and people

hardly noticed any more. An entire industry arose to mold young minds to

crave products, and to cast parents into the subordinate role as financiers

for these fabricated wants. U. McNeal, a former marketing professor at

Texas A & M University, is perhaps the most influential advocate of modern

marketing to children. " [T]he consumer embryo begins to develop during the

first year of existence, " McNeal writes, without a hint of embarrassment or

shame. " [C]hildren begin their consumer journey in infancy and certainly

deserve consideration as consumers at that time. "

It is not comforting to know, as we cuddle our newborns, that there exists

an industry of McNeals eager to prod them onto their " consumer

journey. " Nor is it comforting to know that there are marketing consultants,

like Cheryl Idell of Western Initiative Media Worldwide, advising

corporations on how to harness the " nag factor " to increase sales. Idell

contends that nagging spurs about a third of family trips to fast-food

restaurants, and of purchases of videos and clothing.

And what about the naggees in this arrangement? In the writings of people

like McNeal, parents exist as deep pockets to be siphoned by kids whose role

is to influence purchases. This mentality has become the dominant force with

which parents must contend. They encounter it at every turn: They take the

kids to a sports event and are barraged by ads. They buy a video for them

and find that it is choc-a-bloc with " product placements " - brand-name

products that are built into the story.

Parents feel the heavy breathing of the marketers even on their little ones.

Teletubbies, for example, is an animated TV show aimed at toddlers as young

as one year. The producers portray it as educational. But Marty Brochstein,

editor of the Licensing Letter, is more candid, calling Teletubbies a " major

big bucks opportunity. " The show has done promotions with Burger King and

Mcs. If that's education, it's not the kind most parents have in mind.

The morphing of advertising into life extends even to the schools.

Corporations have taken advantage of tight school budgets to turn classrooms

and hallway walls into billboards for junk food and sneakers. As for the

Internet, it's a marketer's dream, a technology that children roam

unsupervised, and that offers endless opportunities for getting into

children's minds. " Kids don't realize they're reading advertisements, " says

Lloyd Jobe, the CEO of Skateboard.com.

Marketers know exactly where to find children, too. The collection of

children's personal information, and the invasion of their privacy, has

become commonplace. American Student List LLC

(www.studentlist.com/lists/main.html), a list broker, sells a list of " 20

million names of children ranging in age from 2 to 13, " along with their

addresses, ages, genders, telephone numbers, and other personal information.

For advertisers, it all has been a bonanza: Market researchers estimate that

children ages four to twelve influence some $565 billion of their parents

purchasing each year, and McNeal calls children the " superstars in the

consumer constellation. "

For kids, however, the role of consumer " superstars " has meant an epidemic

of marketing-related diseases. American kids are fatter than ever, and rates

of obesity and type-2 diabetes are soaring. Teenage girls have become

obsessed with their bodies, due largely to the images of physical perfection

that barrage them in fashion magazines and ads. More than half of all high

school girls say they were on diets during the previous month. Likewise,

eating disorders are now the third leading chronic illness among adolescent

girls.

Drinking is a problem, too. A study by the National Institute on Media and

Family found that the more a beer company spends on advertising, the more

likely seventh- to twelfth-graders are to know about that beer - and to

drink it. Perhaps not coincidentally, alcohol is a factor in the four main

causes of death among young people ages 10 to 24: car crashes, other

accidents, homicide, and suicide.

The merchants of death are adept at using marketing to undermine the good

influence of parents. Tobacco marketing is especially successful at

counteracting parents who encourage their children not to smoke. Each day,

another 3,000 children start to smoke; roughly a third of them will have

their lives shortened due to smoking-related illnesses.

Added to all this is the production of misery and dissension in the home.

Our children are being coached and prodded in the arts of petulance and

nagging, by those whose sole purpose is to turn them into conduits for their

parents' money. As the anthropologist Jules Henry once noted, advertising

has become an " insolent usurper of parental function, degrading parents to

mere intermediaries between children and the market. "

A survey by the Merck Family Fund found that 86 percent of Americans think

that young people today are " too focused on buying and consuming things. "

Business Week, no enemy of corporate America, perhaps put it best: " Instead

of transmitting a sense of who we are and what we hold important, today's

marketing-driven culture is instilling in [children] a sense that little

exists without a sales pitch attached and that self-worth is something you

buy at a shopping mall. "

You might think our representatives in Washington would show some concern,

but politicians in both major parties seem reluctant to stand up to

commercial predators. Back in the late 1970s, for example, the Federal Trade

Commission (FTC) proposed an end to advertising to children too young to

grasp that ads aren't necessarily true. In response, Congress stripped the

FTC of any authority to enact rules against advertisers who take advantage

of the vulnerabilities of impressionable youth. J. Beales III, chief

of consumer protection in the current administration, is an economist

perhaps best known for his scholarly defense of R. J. Reynolds and its

infamous " Joe Camel " ad campaign. And Scheffman, the new head of the

FTC's bureau of economics, also worked for the tobacco industry.

Parents deserve a little more respect. Their job is hard enough without the

marketing culture treating them as cannon fodder. The technology of

seduction has increased tremendously in sophistication and reach, and

corporate seducers have gained new legal rights too. Yet the means for

parents to contend with these intrusions, and to talk back to the intruders,

have scarcely grown at all. In many respects they have diminished.

The time has come to right the balance. The government can't do parents' job

for them, but it certainly can give them the legal rights they need to stand

up effectively to corporations that target their kids. Parents should not be

second-class citizens. They should not feel under siege by a culture

designed to shake them down for money, and to usurp the function of

instilling values in their kids.

The time has come for a Parents' Bill of Rights.

Rowe is director of the Tomales Bay Institute. Ruskin is

executive director of Commercial Alert (www.commercialalert.org), whose

mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere and

prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of

family, community, environmental integrity, and democracy.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg/

mailto:s.fisher22@...

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,

Your points are well made, and aside from the (perceived) practical

applications of them (i.e. banning sugar) I agree with them. I've read half

(maybe more, I forget) of Sugar Blues, but had to put it down at one point

due to time, and will probably read the rest soon.

But as to banning-- and now I'm not completely sure what your position is-- I

don't think there is really even grounds for it (if the criteria is more than

that a substance be evil). Aside from the complexities I mentioned before,

there are the added complexities of what people will do. If sugar were

banned, I think it would just go underground like drugs have. Whereas if

PHVO were banned I think companies would just start using lard and coconut

oil again. Our culture, or " vulture " is not conducive to banning sugar,

because everyone resents being told what to do, especially eat. If people

were more health conscious, more respectful of ancestral ways of life, etc,

the whole sugar issue would just become a non-issue any way.

I agree with what you said in your first post about the maxim Dr. Price would

add, due to his profound respect for the cultures of the groups he studied.

I don't know what he would view as political applications of that though, as

I have no idea what his political views were.

I have to leave-- fascinating conversation I don't have time for at the

immediate moment would love to have sooner or later.

Ciao,

Chris

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,

No, but I do know many, many people who would willingly take drugs that they

know to be harmful if it gave them relief from their present health issues.

Rather than take a long, hard approach to health, they want a quick fix and

would sell their souls to the devil if it meant they didn't have to suffer

the consequenses of the choices they have made.

Theresa

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Thanks Suze - get me going on Price, corporations, and my grandfather

and look out!

;-)

RE: Re: oreos

>>>>>It will be a long road to get back to some kind of

bioregional self-sufficiency and sustainability for most of us, but

that's where high-quality nutrient-dense community oriented food systems

lead us whether we realize it or not.

---->this is such a good post! thank you for an amazing combination of

good

sense and eloquence, chris :-)

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg/

mailto:s.fisher22@...

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No I don't assume that corporations are out to harm people however they are

quite willing to cover up that fact their products will harm people if they

think they will get away with it. So they might actively try and hinder

science and information catching up with people. In other words Nabisco

doesn't make oreos in an evil plot to make American children sick but they

sure won't advertise the hazards of hydrogenated oil. They might also take

an extra step and try and prevent the hazards of HO from being promulgated

by the government either.

I really think when the information really gets out the majority of parents

will avoid them. Most parents try and do the right thing. I get tired of

talking about trans fats etc because everyone thinks I am a nut. They won't

believe it until they see it on TV.

Irene

At 10:59 PM 5/16/03, you wrote:

>Irene,

>

>Point well stated. I do not disagree with accountability. My point is that

>accountability is more lasting and life changing when it happens at the

>individual level. The only flaw with your point though, is that is suggests

>that the corporations we are speaking of intentionally are out to harm

>people. When the science and information catches up with the market, it then

>becomes each individuals responsibility to opt out of the game, addicition or

>not.

>

>Theresa

>

>

>

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I am not sure which comment you are refering to because it was not attached

to the email but I think you are refering to the rant about guns.

No of course I don't believe that HO kills like guns do . I was drawing a

distinction between making and providing a product in a passive sense where

if you want something, such as a gun or junk food you go out and find it.

And contrasting it with a situation where a product is actively pushed,

sold, and advertised to children in many ways. Then absolving the producer

of any responsibility for people buying the stuff saying that no one was

forced to buy it. I think the producers are responsible for their

advertising and for attempting to get their products into schools where

parents have less control over what their children eat.

If in fact a producer made a product and made no attempt to get it into

schools or advertise it then I think the argument that they are just

providing what people want would be true. People would decide they wanted

it and search it out themselves.

Irene

At 11:30 PM 5/16/03, you wrote:

>Irene,

>

>Are you concluding beyond a reasonable doubt that Oreos kill? What exactly is

>Nabisco supposed to be being held accountable for? Making cookies? I

>personally believe the information that says hydrogenated oils are unhealthy,

>but I'm sure you can find many who disagree.

>

>Theresa

>

>

>

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I wasn't saying that sugar should be banned, just that there were

grounds for banning it. As for all the complexities of other refined

sugars, I think it comes down to whether a substance comes straight from

nature and whether it has been approved for human consumption by our

ancestors (that is having a history of sustainable, intergenerational

human consumption). When we master the integration of those foods again

we can talk about fudging around with newfangled technology-derived

sweeteners. Again, this is my fantasy world here.

Two points to make: first, I think in order to continue the

conversation on this thread we must have read Sugar Blues to fully grasp

both the shocking and devastating power of sugar on health and society

itself, and also the importance of appropriate scale and context of

human society. Price called them " the displacing foods of modern

commerce. " This is how they spread - by infiltrating (and eventually

undermining) local economies and food systems. Rebuilding local

economies must start by rebuilding local food systems, educating the

community, and nurturing culture. Helena Norberg-Hodge's " Ancient

Future, " Schuman's " Going Local, " and " Short Circuit " by Douthwaite are

all incredible resources in this regard.

Second, what Dr. Mike keeps arguing for is a very heavy burden - for

individual parent/units living unbelievably busy lives and being

shamelessly lied to by the corporations & government - to make

consistent, informed, good choices for themselves and their children.

From my studies of anthropology I would say that culture is what informs

us, guides us, and helps us make good choices among the infinite choices

that exist, to live a healthy balanced life. It was culture that helped

traditional cultures to navigate the many dietary choices they did have,

often in very difficult circumstances. We don't have culture today. I

would call it " vulture " because it doesn't come from life but feeds off

life. To rebuild culture, again, we must rebuild local economies and

food systems which by increasing wealth, giving us our time back, making

affordable high quality foods available, and encouraging us to work

together and know each other, provide the breathing room from the global

economy to do more than tread water - we can build sustainable wisdom

cultures! Simply trying to create and enforce a native diet in one's

family today is as we all know - very difficult. The best activism

would make it easy like falling off a log. Having said this I do feel

that every person must constantly think for themselves and not just

follow blindly -any- cultural dictates.

One might wonder whether a healthy culture can really maintain itself

against the full might of corporate confections given that we can look

around and see that most cultures have fallen victim to them around the

world. This touches on the prospect of banning sugar. This is a

question that could never have arisen before the 20th century. We don't

know the answer but I have faith in humans and hope that if we are able

to rebuild sustainable wisdom cultures, that we learn the lessons of our

history and take appropriate precautions. We now have a century of

tragic evidence to take into account and we must do so before it is too

late.

Cheers,

Re: Re: oreos

,

As much as I hate sugar, I'm not really with you on this.

Sugar is not comparable to PHVO for numerous reasons.

As to the rat study, first, it was a rat study. That's informative--

but

there is too much info to look at sugar's impact on humans to revert to

a rat

study on it. Second, they were *only* fed sugar. Rats fed part of

their

diet as sugar, like humans, do live a considerable length.

The difference between PHVO and sugar is that sugar in a proper context

and

amount can be safe or perhaps even healthful in the proper form, whereas

PHVO

does not occur in nature, and confers zero benefit at any quantity.

Define sugar. Fruit is mostly sugar. Table sugar is sugar. Rapadura

is

sugar. Raw honey is sugar. Beets are largely sugar. Bananss are

*full* of

sugar. Is *everything* with sugar to be banned?

If you want to ban only refined white sugar, there is an enormous burden

of

proof on you to demonstrate that unrefined cane sugar is more than

marginally

better than refined cane sugar that you probably cannot meet.

Rapadura's

charts on how much more nutritious they are than other sugars looks

good, but

if you compare it to non-sugar-cane foods the difference really is

marginal.

I use it, but I don't consider it a healthy food, and I use it very,

very,

rarely.

Raw honey is basically pure sugar. But it also has tons of benefits if

used

in the PEROPER CONTEXT AND AMOUNT. But someone could *easily* damage

their

health with enough raw honey if they used it as recklessly as people use

white sugar today. In fact, the could do the same with fruit.

Aside from nutritional history studies or whatever about people who eat

fruit

(because they're also more likely to eat vegetables) you probably

couldn't

find that great of a health benefit to fruit. And you could make a case

fruit is more toxic than glucose syrup, based on metabolism of fructose

and

glucose. I don't agree with it, but you could certainly make a good

case.

And *definitely* could for fruit *juice*.

I very much doubt fruit juice is better for kids than table sugar.

Should we

ban that? If it is made with high fructose corn syrup, probably even

worse.

Oh, but that's a dillema-- high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup are

essentially unrefined sweetneers. What makes them different than maple

syrup, or are we banning that too?

There are people who live into their 90s and eat sugar. Sure they might

be

hidden away in the boondocks of Maine with a family of hunters eating

moose

heart and liver every day, but they're there. Melvin Page found that

about

20% of the people he studied could eat sugar without disrupting their

calcium-phosphorus ratios. This roughly corresponds to Barry Sears'

claim

that about 25% of Americans do not have significant hyperinsulinemic

responses to sugar and starch.

The fact is that sugar affects everyone differently. It is a poison to

some,

and not to others.

Moreover, for most people sugar must simply be prepared in the proper

way,

used in the proper context, and used with the appropriate degree of

MODERATION exercised, in order to get the benefit of good taste without

the

harm.

Chris

In a message dated 5/16/03 8:12:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

radiantlife@... writes:

>

> I think that there are good grounds to ban sugar altogether. It is

> addictive, and damages health beyond a shadow of a doubt. Sally

> regularly quotes the study which showed that rodents lived longer

> consuming just water I believe, than sugar. If a substance can't help

> you live longer than water fasting than it fails the most basic test

for

> being called " food. " Anything that does not pass such a test, if it

> could be confused for food, should be labeled " NOT FOR HUMAN

> CONSUMPTION. " Heck, put " or animal " ( " or rodent? " ) on the label too.

>

> One could argue that the government is already dictating the foods we

> can and can't eat to a very large extent. Look at stevia, raw milk,

> laws against small farming/butchering practices, subsidies of big

> agriculture while small farms go broke by the tens of thousands,

> labeling laws that deceive and benefit the big guys, crackdowns on

> really effective supplements and healing technologies, and the last 50

> years of gov./biz collusion around fats and oils and the low-fat

> paradigm. Not to justify the government's practices, but to point out

> what is already happening. I would be in favor of a radical honest

> independent reassessment of the food supply, and subjecting every

> coloring, flavoring, excitotoxin, sweetener, preservative, additive,

as

> well as any other proposed food substance sold in the US, to

independent

> scrutiny - demanding that proof be shown (independent, not

> corporate-funded studies) that the substance actually supports human

> health both in the short- and long-term (and intergenerationally most

> importantly of all!) with no side effects. Nice fantasy eh?

>

> My grandfather, Herbert Dutton, is a lipid chemist who blew one of the

> first peer-reviewed whistles on trans fats around the time that

> Enig published her original papers on the subject. He is quoted in

> " Facts about Fats " by Finnegan as saying that if trans fats were

brought

> before the FDA today, they would not be approved for use in the food

> supply. Why should foods be " grandfathered " into the food supply (is

> that a pun or just a play?) just because they were approved before we

> knew better?

>

> One key (and essential) victory for consumers would be a change in the

> powers of corporations, as others have mentioned on this list. Taking

> away corporate limited liability and the current corporate right to

> personhood would strike fear into the scheming hearts of thousands of

> CEOs and executives who now sit around all day long and devise new

> colorful, impossibly sweet and tasty confections to lure kids/parents

> into dropping $5 on $.50 worth of wheat, sugar, trans fats, and

> colorings (cereal). It figures that most of these guys answer to a

> master that has already addicted and killed too many millions - the

> tobacco industry (their parent corporation). If Price were still

around

> I'm sure he would have created another maxim: that food must never

> become a commodity like oil or computers, which is bought and sold

> between strangers and where the primary motivation is profit. We must

> resist the commodification of our lives, and work to regain the

richness

> of our natural context, which as Irene pointed out, is community. In

> that context, it is hard for people to sell poison to each other, and

> they certainly wouldn't pollute the river upstream of their neighbors

if

> they could help it. It will be a long road to get back to some kind

of

> bioregional self-sufficiency and sustainability for most of us, but

> that's where high-quality nutrient-dense community oriented food

systems

> lead us whether we realize it or not.

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that

we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and

servi

le, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore

Roosevelt

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Theresa-

>is that is suggests

>that the corporations we are speaking of intentionally are out to harm

>people.

Do you believe corporations are never out to intentionally harm people,

even when it would profitable to do so?

I don't offhand know how Nabisco fits into the larger mega-corporation

tangle. It's possible that the Oreo people have absolutely no interest in

harming people per se and are only knowingly doing so because hydrogenated

oils were a socially acceptable alternative to socially unacceptable

tropical and animal fats and also happened to save them a huge amount of

money and make Oreos much more profitable in the bargain.

But ignore Nabisco and Oreos for the moment.

Do you think the new blood pressure guidelines and the relatively new

cholesterol guidelines came strictly from misguided doctors doing their

level best to help people? Or do you think it's possible that the

pharmaceutical companies which make and sell blood pressure and cholesterol

drugs, knowing full well that these drugs have many harmful side effects

and that the new guidelines will result in many more people who have no

real problems and shouldn't be taking any of these drugs being put on them

by their doctors, pushed the guidelines through anyway?

-

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Just to be clear, regarding banning foods, I think we need an FDA which

works for the public interest, and which bans clear non-foods like trans

oils and toxic additives. That's just the first part though. In the

short term we need major activism, education, and good personal choices.

In the long term the answer is rebuilding local economies and wisdom

cultures, closing the revolving door between corporations and gov, and

limiting the power of corporations.

Thanks to all who posted on this subject - very interesting discussion!

Let's keep working at making change on all levels we can!

Re: Re: oreos

,

Your points are well made, and aside from the (perceived) practical

applications of them (i.e. banning sugar) I agree with them. I've read

half

(maybe more, I forget) of Sugar Blues, but had to put it down at one

point

due to time, and will probably read the rest soon.

But as to banning-- and now I'm not completely sure what your position

is-- I

don't think there is really even grounds for it (if the criteria is more

than

that a substance be evil). Aside from the complexities I mentioned

before,

there are the added complexities of what people will do. If sugar were

banned, I think it would just go underground like drugs have. Whereas

if

PHVO were banned I think companies would just start using lard and

coconut

oil again. Our culture, or " vulture " is not conducive to banning sugar,

because everyone resents being told what to do, especially eat. If

people

were more health conscious, more respectful of ancestral ways of life,

etc,

the whole sugar issue would just become a non-issue any way.

I agree with what you said in your first post about the maxim Dr. Price

would

add, due to his profound respect for the cultures of the groups he

studied.

I don't know what he would view as political applications of that

though, as

I have no idea what his political views were.

I have to leave-- fascinating conversation I don't have time for at the

immediate moment would love to have sooner or later.

Ciao,

Chris

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>I agree go ahead get consensus on what the poisons are and get them

>to stop being sold, that's just peachy but until then the only

>people responsible for " feeding " kids this stuff are the parents.

I agree with you that everyone needs to be responsible, but to say that

" the ONLY people responsible ... " are the parents ignores years and years

of study in psychology. ly most people can't control their own actions

very well (else there would be little obesity or drug addiction or sex

addiction or phobias or neurosis or schizophrenia ... etc. etc.). Who we

are is a complex combination of free will, hard wiring, chemistry, and

social interaction. And if folks can't control their OWN actions very well,

how much control do you really think they have over their kids?

Some of the best examples of this are the hard-line anti-drug politicians

-- whose own kids and spouses are addicts. Preachers too. They are folks

that are very much into " self control " -- but self-control is something of

an illusion. It IS possible to control your life, but a lot of it is

controlling the environment and your social group -- like, don't keep booze

around if you are an alcoholic and don't hang around heavy drinkers. Kids

have some self-control and tend to be obedient -- at least until they are

teenagers -- but expecting them to " buck the system " at an early age is

expecting more than most adults can handle. Unless they obviously get SICK

off a food -- which are the cases you mention ( " the kid can't have this or

that " ).

Anyway, if you want to control your kids you pretty much have to keep them

home all the time, or make sure the school environment is " safe. " I do that

by telling the teachers what my kids can and can't have (and they cooperate

with that, fortunately) and asking for warning when cupcakes and other

treats might come into class, and avoiding some of the social occasions.

" Moms and doughnuts " really got me -- I just could not stand being in a

room full of Krispy Kreme smell! But if I could support a resolution to get

at least the known junk/allergy food out of the school activities (no one

believes Krispy Kremes are decent food!) I'd support it.

Some schools HAVE banned peanuts, for instance -- it is too hard for a kid

to know what snacks have peanuts and which don't, and the kids swap food

(also being banned at some schools), and peanut allergies can be fatal. No

one is saying " It is the parent's responsibility to make sure their kid

doesn't eat peanuts " !

-- Heidi

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>It costs consumers tons of money in

>tution for private schools. A mom who stays at home does NOT

>require the family spend any extra money for the children to learn.

That just isn't true. The time I spend with my kids absolutely costs our

family money. I'm only half in the workforce, and that lack of time costs

our bottom line in real hard dollars. If there was no choice -- if all

Mom's stayed at home all the time -- then yeah, homeschooling would be a

no-cost issue, and that was true in the late 1800's when most families

farmed. And I have seen homeschooling families go bankrupt -- fortunately

our society still has enough social net left to help them so they didn't

end up under a bridge. Again, the big costs around here are health care and

housing -- my officemate had to pay $800 a month to get health insurance!

Until the infrastructure changes, the one-income household is difficult to

manage.

Anyway, I don't see homeschooling as the best option. A good teacher is

worth a LOT also, as is a peer group and friends. Our schools might not be

in great shape, but they are fixable for a fraction of our military budget.

Your average Mom has not been trained in teaching, and I've seen the

teachers at our little underfunded school do a great job with my kids.

-- Heidi

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Theresa-

I assume you're responding to my post. (You need to backquote a little so

we can understand what you're responding to.)

>and then turning to the " dark side " are testiments

>to the point about personal responsibility. Your here aren't you. No one

>forced you to join this website. You decided on your own that sugar wasn't

>working for you after learning first hand of it's ill effects. Now you are

>some of the most outspoken voices against sugar, trans-fats, crappy food,

>etc.

I would say the exact opposite is true. I would say that my turning to the

dark side and then crossing back over, so to speak, is a testament to three

things: poor and ignorant parenting and grandparenting including a lousy

low-fat " health food " diet, the universal availability and pushing of

harmful foods, and severe ill health (which, just for the sake of clarity

and completeness, did not all result from my poor dietary history -- some

of it was completely unconnected to any choices I ever made or could have

made). If I'd kept eating the way I used to, I'd be dead by now, so it

didn't exactly require a massive application of " personal responsibility "

to decide to make a change. However, it did take oceans of time and a fair

amount of intelligence -- not to mention plenty of relapses and huge

quantities of money -- to get here, to the point of knowing a lot about

Price and the WAPF and metabolic typing and all the various aspects of

low-carbing and high-fat eating and soil fertility and so on and so forth

ad nauseam, not to mention understanding that there are flaws in every

single doctrine out there and that I have to somehow figure out how to pick

out and integrate the useful elements of all of them while discarding the

nonsense.

Should we just consign people who are too busy with jobs and families and

the desperate struggle for bare survival to their fate, even though their

fate affects us too? Should we lecture them -- or better yet just talk

amongst ourselves -- about personal responsibility and leave it at that?

I'd also like to ask what exactly you mean by " personal responsibility " in

the first place. At what age does a child become fully responsible for

himself in your eyes? Was I supposed to be mentally competent and mature

enough to be " responsible " for my own dietary decisions at the age of

two? Eight? Ten? Thirteen? Seventeen? Do we accept the age of legal

majority, eighteen, as the universal threshold? Or twenty-one, the

drinking age? And what part do the actions (and inactions) of my family

play in placing that threshold, or in defining the gradient of my growing

responsibility?

And how does the availability of the internet figure in? There was no

public internet when I was a kid, but just about everything I now know

about health has come either directly from the net or from something or

someone on the net pointing me to a print resource. If the internet had

shown up a good deal earlier, I'd never have had to exercise what you call

my " testament " to " personal responsibility " , or at least not to nearly this

degree.

And what has this marvelous personal responsibility that supposedly brought

me here gotten me? Moderately less-horrible ill health. Maybe it'll even

eventually bring me to something approximating decent or adequate or

tolerable health, though I have my doubts. And whose " responsibility " is

that ill health? Mine? My family's? I gather you'd say that the

companies who market and sell huge quantities of sugar and hydrogenated

oils and soy and the like to ignorant, gullible children (and parents) bear

zero responsibility rather than some portion of the blame.

And if you answer that my family deserves some of the blame, what is the

practical outcome of that judgement? That they should bear scarlet

letters, or wear heavy logs around their necks, to mark their shame? That

they should offer financial compensation to me for some portion of my ill

health? That my mother should offer to take back my birth and kill me to

put me out of my misery? Obviously not. As far as I can tell, what you

call responsibility does not carry any consequences at all.

And why does trying to ban the sale of a poison to minors " let parents off

the hook " and give them a " free pass " on their responsibility anyway? For

one thing, it's not physically possible for parents to control everything

their children think and do. And for another, even if banning poison did

technically allow parents to abdicate some measure of responsibility, SO

WHAT? Do the lives and well-being of innocent children mean nothing? Have

you not read about how each successive generation of children is fatter and

sicker and more prone to horrible diseases? About how asthma is

skyrocketing, allergies are blooming, obesity is spreading, tuberculosis is

back, adult-onset diabetes is striking younger and younger, and so on?

And how about soy infant formula (something I thank my lucky stars I was

spared)? Who's " responsibility " is that, and what do you say to a sickly,

obese (or underweight), brain-damaged, cavity-ridden,

hormonally-imbalanced, violence-prone problem child whose mother raised him

on soy formula and an ultra-low-fat vegan diet once he's all grown up and

has no prospects for anything other than a life of violence and

woe? " Where's your sense of personal responsibility, you immoral retard? " ?

And what about mercury-filled immunization shots? Do you say " No matter

how many companies, doctors and institutions lie, and how faint or even

undetectable the opposition is, it's the sole PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY of

parents to figure everything out themselves " and avoid accidentally harming

their children by doing something that seems obviously beneficial and which

virtually every authority insists is not only healthful but required?

And how about water fluoridation? Do you say " There shouldn't be tap water

in the first place because all social and community services result in an

abdication of personal responsibility " ?

Why is it that companies, executives, doctors, institutions, authorities,

only bear any responsibility if they literally hold a gun to people's heads

or drag them off to the magical wonderful Oreo Cookie Concentration Camp,

but are completely absolved of all functional responsibility if they merely

create an environment of lies, marketing, peer pressure, and fraudulent

official guidelines in which all people are forced to live and breathe

every moment of day of their lives?

-

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>===============Again, Hedi why are you the exception. You had crud

>circumstances to learn in but you did as have many others in the

>same situation. Catering to the lowest common denominator and

>making excuses for them just allows them to go lower.

??? So who is making excuses for them? I'm not excusing anything. It's just

that this is a quantum universe -- there is no one cause for anything.

Human beings are social beings and our *environment* counts for a LOT,

self-control counts for a lot too. I can't control someone else's

self-control, but changing the environment WILL help a lot of othem. To use

an extreme example, no one really doubts that kids going to a hard-line

Muslim religious school will mostly turn out to be hard-line Muslim

extremists. A few might buck their upbringing and turn out to be quiet

Buddhist monks, but it is doubtful. Ditto those same kids going to a

Buddhist school are unlikely to turn out to be Muslim extremists. Every

major religion teaches this -- teach the kids early. Scientists believe it too.

So why should anyone be surprised that the corporations believe it? If the

kids see lots of Coke signs, they will, at some level, be indoctrinated to

think " Coke is good " . The brain is MUCH more pliable before age 10, ask any

neurobiologist. I would no more want to send my kid to a school with lots

of Coke signs than to a Muslim extremist school, and for the same reasons!

Homeschooling is inexpensive, but when you grow to

> > class size it gets amazingly pricey.

>

>================Why would you want to grow class size. Its a proven

>fact that the smaller the class size the more learning occurs. No

>reason to grow class size.

Because I want my kids to know other kids besides their siblings. Myself,

I'm pretty high on the Asperger scale and could care less. But they are

actually getting *social skills.* They like having friends.

>

> > Homeschooling is " cheap " mainly because you are not paying the

>Mom's

> > salary. If I am worth, say, $20,000 a year, then my kid's

>schooling would

> > cost $10,000 a year each, which is NOT cheap. And the fact is,

>I'm worth

> > more than $20,000 on the open market. Having a stay at home Mom is

> > priceless: it is NOT cheap!

>

>

>==================Don't nitpick here, I'm not minimizing mom's here

>that's ridiculous. Stay at home mom's are priceless however THEY

>WORK CHEAP! As in FREE. Again cheap = need no cash.

OK, so you are a doctor. Quit your practice and stay home to teach your

kids. Then ask your wife if that decision was CHEAP = needs no cash!

> Parents figure it is better than nothing.

> >

> > This whole " give the power back to the people " bit is really

> > government-speak for " give the power to the corporations " . I don't

>like

> > some of the government stuff, but in general there is more public

>oversight

> > for government agencies. Giving MORE power to the Enrons of the

>world does

> > not sound like a safe life to me.

>

>

>Heidi, I'm cerainly not suggesting anything of the sort. And my However

>such a

>sentiment were it actually executed in an honest and appropriate way

>(not the co-opted version- the one you commented on) the world would

>be far safer than the one you know and Enron wouldn't even exist!

Well, I'd tend to agree on that. The problem is, that historically whenever

a group of people are just sitting there existing happily, sooner or later

some guy (Ghengis Khan comes to mind) decides to get together with a lot of

his merry men and start pillaging. Which is why we started forming

governments in the first place -- to protect us from the pillagers. This

started back before agriculture -- those nice Amazon tribes can have

something like a 25% death rate from intertribal warfare. Today the

pillagers tend to be big corporations and they are much more subtle. Though

I can't say Enron was too subtle, and my electricity bill are 300% higher

as a result!

Me, I'm hoping for a world where oil is created locally, as is electricity,

and medicine becomes cheaper, and the government becomes the equalizer. No

amount of self-responsibility or cleverness could or did defend our town

against Enron.

> > -- Heidi

>

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>Is it fair to tell them that at least one person, presumably

>the wife in the vast majority of cases, should stay at home for the

>kids? Is it fair to the kids to have no parents at home? It seems to me

>that the answer to both question is no, but where the hell does that leave

>us? (I guess that's a rhetorical question, since that issue is beyond the

>scope of this list.)

I don't know that it is rhetorical -- for our family it is a real issue.

The fact I fired our cook (yeah, I had a cook!) so I could take over the

cooking because I felt that something was lacking (took me another year to

figure out WHAT was wrong) did COST us money. The cook was cheaper than I

am! Eating good is costing us more in real dollars -- the ingredients cost

less, but I'm not in the workforce as much as I should be, not to mention

all the time researching (this list is part of the research).

NT-type cooking originated in days when there WAS no " economy " -- no cash

to speak of. You picked food, or grew it or hunted it -- and prepared it.

That was a woman's main job in life, besides textiles and watching the

kids. So it all comes back to that -- the woman, her place in life, where

food fits in. I talked to one woman who felt like she " wasn't doing enough "

because most of the day she was cooking or watching kids or cleaning -- and

I said, well, isn't that what life WAS? It wasn't about pushing papers or

taking classes.

But the world has changed -- she has a husband who brings in a good

livelihood, so she can live that kind of life for awhile. Your average

Walmart employee just can't do it, have a wife who stays home and cooks. We

don't have a good model for an economy where folks can have modern " stuff "

and also a nice life.

-- Heidi

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>To say we can't prevent someone from lying is sort of like saying that we

>can't prevent someone from stealing so you had just better protect

>yourself. Protecting yourself is a good idea but we don't hesitate to haul

>someones butt to jail if they are caught stealing!

>Irene

Well said. Part of the issue is that the average corporate employee (and

the CEO's) are on a reward system -- but the reward system is not based on

" how much good the product is doing for the average person " . The reward

system is based on " how much profit it makes " . The corporation itself is in

a life/death competitive struggle against other corporations, and the

life/death part depends, again, on market share and profit, not " good for

humanity " . Coke makes tons of money -- cheap to produce, cheap to market.

They have nothing to lose by lying, unless and until someone like Nader

fights back.

The only marketing model that has worked well for eons is the

community-based model -- i.e. I buy from my local farmer. If he lies to me,

I don't like him any more, and he knows it, plus it is hard to lie to

someone you know, face to face. It would be very expensive for him to make

something like Coke, much less to get me to drink it (he could not afford

the massive ad campaigns).

-- Heidi

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>we cannot leave *community* out of the equation.

>While it may not be characteristic of euro-americans, there are many other

>cultures in the world that revolve around community, where people help each

>other and take responsibility not only for themselves, but for those in

>their community. i don't see " sheeple " in my community, but rather people

>who may benefit from my chapter's activities, and from our extended group,

>including local farmers, NDs, etc.

Well said, Suze! I would like to add that " sheepleness " is sort of an

offshoot off our desire to be in a community -- if the community is

healthy, the ability to kind of " go along with the group " is a GOOD thing.

The only time it becomes bad is when the flock is headed off over the cliff

-- then the rebels start shouting " Hey guys, there's a cliff! "

A person in a healthy community should NOT have to spend half their lives

researching what is good and bad. The community holds the information -- as

traditions, which is what NT is all about. So each individual doesn't have

to work quite so hard -- again, that is what community is all about.

We currently don't have much of a community, except these online ones.

-- Heidi

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Dr. M,

I actually agree with you - I just said that parents are faced with a

heavy burden - not that we shouldn't each make better choices and hold

ourselves to the highest standards.

The same forces of currency devaluation and global economic growth that

forced both parents into the workplace in the 60s have not abated. Only

now we don't have another parent to send into the workforce! What are

we going to do now - send our children into the workplace? The meta

trends I refer to are shrinking the middle class and leading to massive

inequalities in wealth. Living in the Bay Area I have heard that in

1975 one could move to SF, get an average paying part-time job that

would pay for all expenses, and you would have half your time available

for activism, outdoor adventure, hanging out, family, etc. Today an

average part-time job would pay for 1/2 your rent if you are lucky, and

nothing else! Having spent years in Marin county, which is consistently

one of the wealthiest counties in the US, I have seen there is a

surprising intensity and frenetic-ness here to make money to pay for

this life (except for the old money). Even with lower costs of living

in other parts of the country the story is pretty much the same. The

point is that like the health problems from processed foods earlier in

the 20th century, the insidious effects of currency devaluation and the

global economy are hard to spot unless you step back, take a bigger view

or it, ie. look at buying power and relative income/hours worked 20 and

40+ years ago. The answer again is challenging the global economy, and

supporting local economies and currencies which give us our time and

wealth (and culture) back. Re-prioritizing expenses would help but will

not solve the problem because it is a systemic problem.

So Dr. M, I anticipate that you may react ornerily to this email so let

me be clear - I agree that many parents need their butts kicked to be

responsible providers. No question about it. Many could no doubt

benefit greatly by reprioritizing spending. I just feel that while we

all work on the micro level with all due diligence, that some thought

and effort should be focused on the macro level economic forces which

are increasingly enslaving humanity. I am again certain that Price

would have created a very sophisticated connection between and thesis

re: economic globablization and the state of our health if he were

around today - the patterns were to nascent to fully grasp back in his

day.

While intimation of economic meta-trends will surely be challenged

without lots of supporting evidence which I don't have time to post, and

which would probably take the list too far away from nutrition, I would

be happy to compose a hefty email at some point that would be full of

mind-boggling evidence for those who contact me personally.

Cheers,

Re: Re: oreos

>

> ,

>

> As much as I hate sugar, I'm not really with you on this.

>

> Sugar is not comparable to PHVO for numerous reasons.

>

> As to the rat study, first, it was a rat study. That's

informative--

> but

> there is too much info to look at sugar's impact on humans to

revert to

> a rat

> study on it. Second, they were *only* fed sugar. Rats fed part of

> their

> diet as sugar, like humans, do live a considerable length.

>

> The difference between PHVO and sugar is that sugar in a proper

context

> and

> amount can be safe or perhaps even healthful in the proper form,

whereas

> PHVO

> does not occur in nature, and confers zero benefit at any quantity.

>

> Define sugar. Fruit is mostly sugar. Table sugar is sugar.

Rapadura

> is

> sugar. Raw honey is sugar. Beets are largely sugar. Bananss are

> *full* of

> sugar. Is *everything* with sugar to be banned?

>

> If you want to ban only refined white sugar, there is an enormous

burden

> of

> proof on you to demonstrate that unrefined cane sugar is more than

> marginally

> better than refined cane sugar that you probably cannot meet.

> Rapadura's

> charts on how much more nutritious they are than other sugars looks

> good, but

> if you compare it to non-sugar-cane foods the difference really is

> marginal.

> I use it, but I don't consider it a healthy food, and I use it

very,

> very,

> rarely.

>

> Raw honey is basically pure sugar. But it also has tons of

benefits if

> used

> in the PEROPER CONTEXT AND AMOUNT. But someone could *easily*

damage

> their

> health with enough raw honey if they used it as recklessly as

people use

>

> white sugar today. In fact, the could do the same with fruit.

>

> Aside from nutritional history studies or whatever about people

who eat

> fruit

> (because they're also more likely to eat vegetables) you probably

> couldn't

> find that great of a health benefit to fruit. And you could make

a case

>

> fruit is more toxic than glucose syrup, based on metabolism of

fructose

> and

> glucose. I don't agree with it, but you could certainly make a

good

> case.

> And *definitely* could for fruit *juice*.

>

> I very much doubt fruit juice is better for kids than table sugar.

> Should we

> ban that? If it is made with high fructose corn syrup, probably

even

> worse.

>

> Oh, but that's a dillema-- high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup

are

> essentially unrefined sweetneers. What makes them different than

maple

> syrup, or are we banning that too?

>

> There are people who live into their 90s and eat sugar. Sure they

might

> be

> hidden away in the boondocks of Maine with a family of hunters

eating

> moose

> heart and liver every day, but they're there. Melvin Page found

that

> about

> 20% of the people he studied could eat sugar without disrupting

their

> calcium-phosphorus ratios. This roughly corresponds to Barry

Sears'

> claim

> that about 25% of Americans do not have significant

hyperinsulinemic

> responses to sugar and starch.

>

> The fact is that sugar affects everyone differently. It is a

poison to

> some,

> and not to others.

>

> Moreover, for most people sugar must simply be prepared in the

proper

> way,

> used in the proper context, and used with the appropriate degree

of

> MODERATION exercised, in order to get the benefit of good taste

without

> the

> harm.

>

> Chris

>

> In a message dated 5/16/03 8:12:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

> radiantlife@e... writes:

>

> >

> > I think that there are good grounds to ban sugar altogether. It

is

> > addictive, and damages health beyond a shadow of a doubt. Sally

> > regularly quotes the study which showed that rodents lived longer

> > consuming just water I believe, than sugar. If a substance

can't help

> > you live longer than water fasting than it fails the most basic

test

> for

> > being called " food. " Anything that does not pass such a test,

if it

> > could be confused for food, should be labeled " NOT FOR HUMAN

> > CONSUMPTION. " Heck, put " or animal " ( " or rodent? " ) on the label

too.

>

> >

> > One could argue that the government is already dictating the

foods we

> > can and can't eat to a very large extent. Look at stevia, raw

milk,

> > laws against small farming/butchering practices, subsidies of big

> > agriculture while small farms go broke by the tens of thousands,

> > labeling laws that deceive and benefit the big guys, crackdowns

on

> > really effective supplements and healing technologies, and the

last 50

> > years of gov./biz collusion around fats and oils and the low-fat

> > paradigm. Not to justify the government's practices, but to

point out

> > what is already happening. I would be in favor of a radical

honest

> > independent reassessment of the food supply, and subjecting every

> > coloring, flavoring, excitotoxin, sweetener, preservative,

additive,

> as

> > well as any other proposed food substance sold in the US, to

> independent

> > scrutiny - demanding that proof be shown (independent, not

> > corporate-funded studies) that the substance actually supports

human

> > health both in the short- and long-term (and intergenerationally

most

> > importantly of all!) with no side effects. Nice fantasy eh?

> >

> > My grandfather, Herbert Dutton, is a lipid chemist who blew one

of the

> > first peer-reviewed whistles on trans fats around the time that

> > Enig published her original papers on the subject. He is quoted

in

> > " Facts about Fats " by Finnegan as saying that if trans fats were

> brought

> > before the FDA today, they would not be approved for use in the

food

> > supply. Why should foods be " grandfathered " into the food

supply (is

> > that a pun or just a play?) just because they were approved

before we

> > knew better?

> >

> > One key (and essential) victory for consumers would be a change

in the

> > powers of corporations, as others have mentioned on this list.

Taking

> > away corporate limited liability and the current corporate right

to

> > personhood would strike fear into the scheming hearts of

thousands of

> > CEOs and executives who now sit around all day long and devise

new

> > colorful, impossibly sweet and tasty confections to lure

kids/parents

> > into dropping $5 on $.50 worth of wheat, sugar, trans fats, and

> > colorings (cereal). It figures that most of these guys answer

to a

> > master that has already addicted and killed too many millions -

the

> > tobacco industry (their parent corporation). If Price were still

> around

> > I'm sure he would have created another maxim: that food must

never

> > become a commodity like oil or computers, which is bought and

sold

> > between strangers and where the primary motivation is profit.

We must

> > resist the commodification of our lives, and work to regain the

> richness

> > of our natural context, which as Irene pointed out, is

community. In

> > that context, it is hard for people to sell poison to each

other, and

> > they certainly wouldn't pollute the river upstream of their

neighbors

> if

> > they could help it. It will be a long road to get back to some

kind

> of

> > bioregional self-sufficiency and sustainability for most of us,

but

> > that's where high-quality nutrient-dense community oriented food

> systems

> > lead us whether we realize it or not.

>

>

> " To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or

that

> we are

> to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic

and

> servi

> le, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore

> Roosevelt

>

>

>

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In a message dated 5/17/03 9:07:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

heidis@... writes:

> Our society is NOT family-friendly. Most parents have to put their kids in

> daycare, which I think is deadly (no bonding with the family, no

> breastfeeding). The whole economic profile of the country needs overhaul if

>

> we want healthy sane people.

Only partially off-topic: Why is it people who do " real work " get rewarded

with social security (and private retirement funds) but stay-at-home parents

who don't " work " (but who are really doing the most basic, vital work there

is) are not? That stay-at-home mom's " work for free " as Dr. Mike pointed out

seems to be one of the most artificial things about our economy. One of the

problems with cash-based economy is it dissociates-- labor from product,

isolated tasks from complexes of tasks, and on and on. This can be more

" efficient " but it creates many artificialities. It seems normal that a

stay-at-home mom is not " paid, " to us, but that is really a great artificial

distortion of where a " mom " would fit into a more primitive economy.

Chris

" To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are

to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and

servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. " --Theodore

Roosevelt

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